Janet Beck was an invited speaker at the University of
Texas Annual Immigration Law Conference in Austin, Texas in October. Her
topic was Family Immigration Law. Professor Beck, accompanying Professor Hoffman, made a presentation
to students at the UH Graduate School of Social Work, on the 6th
amendment right to counsel vis-à-vis mental competency in immigration court
proceedings. Ms. Beck also spoke on how evaluations by mental health
professionals help the student attorneys in the Clinic prove the legal
requirement of mental harm to Clinic clients. Ms. Beck explained that
this sometimes means that a client applying for asylum who is suffering from
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has to relive the trauma in order to present her
story to the immigration court or the U.S. Asylum office.

Barbara
Evans’ article, Mining the Human Genome after Association for
Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, has been accepted by the Nature
journal,Genetics in Medicine.
The article reconceives the human genome as a natural resource and cites Professor Jacqueline Weaver’s work on
oilfield unitization agreements to explain why natural resource law is superior
to IP law as a framework for promoting useful innovation in medical genetics.
On October 27-28, Professor Evans attended a Greenwall
Foundation Faculty Scholars Program meeting in New York. On October 29,
Professor Evans, along with ProfessorsKumar and Roberts, held a Genetics Symposium for UHLC students. On November
17-18, she traveled to Washington for a meeting of the Institute of Medicine’s
Committee on Ethics Principles and Guidelines for Health Standards for Long
Duration and Exploration Spaceflight.

Robert B.
Johnson acted as moderator for the Consumer Law Practice & Strategies
conference held at the University of Houston Law Centeron
Thursday, September 27th. The conference was the first in a series of CLE
events for University of Houston Law Center alumni. The event attracted over
130 practicing attorneys. In late September, Robert released his article Breaking Down Small
Claims in the New Justice Court in the Fall 2013 edition of the Journal
of Commercial & Consumer Law. On Saturday, October 5th,
Robert lectured a group of 35 consumers on the new rules governing small claims
cases in Justice Court. On Wednesday, November 12, Robert was the guest speaker
for the Houston Bar Association’s Commercial & Consumer Law luncheon.
Robert gave an hour long lecture to local attorneys on the practical
application of Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 500 to 510.

Craig Joyce, the namesake of the American Society for
Legal History’s “Craig Joyce Award,” attended ASLH’s Annual Meeting in Miami,
where he reported to the Society’s Board as chair of two committees (Annual
Meetings and History of the Society), The “HOTS” Committee is charged
with capturing, as curiously had not been done before, the history of the
history society. The Annual Meetings Committee is charged with continuing
the viability of ASLH’s annual meetings tradition of excellence in the face of
financial constraints engendered by the current crisis of funding in American
legal education.

Sapna
Kumar gave a talk titled "Gene Patents and Human Rights" at
the Whittier Law School symposium "The Global Challenge: The Fine Line Between Incentivizing Innovation and Protecting Human
Rights." She has also been invited to present her article Public Law, Standing, and the Federal
Circuit at the Hofstra IP Colloquium.

Ellen Marrus
presented at the National Juvenile Defender Center Annual Summit on November 1
– 3, 2013, in Phoenix, Arizona on Ethics and Juvenile Defense and Networking on
Juvenile Issues in the Southwest Region. She also has become a Juvenile
Training Immersion Program (JTIP) certified trainer and will be involved in the
training of juvenile defenders in Shelby County, Tennessee this coming
December.

Rick McElvaney spoke on three topics at
the Military and Veterans Law Section of the State Bar of Texas, 21st
Biennial Institute, on October 25, 2013 in San Antonio, Texas. He presented on
the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, Fair Debt Collection, and Landlord and
Tenant Law.

Michael
A. Olivas was appointed to chair the AALS Committee on Academic Freedom and
Tenure (CAFT), effective after the January Annual Meeting. He attended a
meeting of CAFT in DC to consult on a case before the group. While
in DC, he also participated in two sessions of the National Academy of
Education (the Education equivalent of ALI), as a mentor to four junior faculty
and as an advisor to several Academy Spencer Foundation-funded Dissertation and
Postdoctoral Fellows. He gave the Howard Bowen Distinguished Lecture at
the Claremont Graduate University, on his new Johns Hopkins University Press
book, Suing Alma Mater. He also published From A “Legal Organization of Militants” Into A “Law Firm for the
Latino Community”: MALDEF and the Purposive Cases of Keyes, Rodriguez, and Plyler, 90 Denver
University LawReview
1151-1208 (2013).

Jordan Paust was a commentator after the presentation of
Professor Michael Newton of Vanderbilt University on war crimes in Syria, which
was sponsored by the Federalist Society and the International Law Society
October 31st. Also, Paust, Bassiouni, Scharf, et al., Human
Rights Module:On Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide, Other Crimes Against Human Rights,
and War Crimes(3d ed. 2013) has been published by Carolina
Academic Press. It is a softcover Module of cases and materials with a
self-contained Documents Section. Jordan Paust was a
member of one of the plenary panels at the Canadian Council on International
Law annual meeting in Ottawa on November 16th. The panel addressed
the role of non-state actors and methodological approaches to international
law.

Susan Sakmar
published her most recent law review article Global Gas Markets: The Role of LNG in the Golden Age of Gas and the
Globalization of LNG Trade, 35 Houston J. Int’l Law 655 (2013). Professor
Sakmar presented “Energy for the 21st Century:Opportunities and Challenges for LNG” which focused on the legal process
for U.S. LNG Exports at the Fall meeting of the Potential Gas Committee,
October 6-7, 2013 in Monterey, CA.

Spencer
Simons is participating in an ABA site team visit at the Tampa Bay
campus of Cooley Law School from November 17 through November 20. Closer
to home, Spencer has accepted an invitation from Interim Associate Provost F.
Richard Olenchak to serve as a founding member of the
Faculty Engagement and Development (FED) Advisory Board

Greg Vetter presented the topic of Software
Protection on October 30th as a part of the University of Texas at Austin’s
hosting of the University of St. Gallen Postgraduate
Program Executive M.B.L.-HSG. The Executive Masters in European and
International Business Law (M.B.L.-HSG) is a postgraduate law course of study
by the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, one
of the top European Universities for the study of European and International
Business Law. Professor Vetter also hosted Professor Elizabeth Rowe, Professor
Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law,
in her visit to Houston on November 7-8, 2013, to present the 20th Annual IPIL
Fall Lecture, sponsored by the Ronald A. Katz Foundation.

Jacqueline
Weaver gave two lectures at the Rocky Mountain Short Course in Oil and
Gas Law in Denver, Colorado on October 21 on the nature of the
oil and gas lease and on the duration of leases. She also spoke at the
Houston Bar Association's Fall reception at the
Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Bret Wells co-presented an outline entitled
"Ethical Issues Related to Tax Opinions" with Ira Shepard as part of the inaugural Tax LLM Reunion held on
October 11 at UHLC. Professor Wells and Professor Shepard then presented
the same paper to the Wednesday Tax Forum on October 15 and to the Tax Section
of the Houston Bar Association on October 16.

Kellen
Zale presented her paper "The Government's Right to Destroy"
at the Local Government Scholars workshop, held on October 25-26 at Chapman
University School of Law.